


Living Will

by toomuchplor



Series: Living Will [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Medical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-13
Updated: 2009-01-13
Packaged: 2017-10-20 04:17:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/208641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomuchplor/pseuds/toomuchplor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Unh,” said McKay, and folded his arms under his face before flopping down again. The position pulled the sleeves of his scrubs top taut around his biceps. “If I hide here it’s harder for the interns to find me.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Living Will

“I want to talk to you about my living will,” said McKay, staggering into the lounge and collapsing onto the sagging tweed couch.

“Let me guess,” said John, looking up from his tattered journal. The same copy of the _American Journal of Surgical Pathology_ had been kicking around the room since John started his residency two years ago but he still hadn’t had time to finish it. “You want to get ‘DNR’ tattooed on your chest?”

“Well, yes, obviously,” sniped McKay, the sarcasm undercut a little by the way his face was pushed into the mildewed old cushions. He was going to regret that position. Sure enough, he reared up almost immediately and glared down at the couch. “This thing smells like my cat peed on it.”

“If you don’t like it, there’s always the medical lounge down on your own floor,” John pointed out for the hundredth time.

“Unh,” said McKay, and folded his arms under his face before flopping down again. The position pulled the sleeves of his scrubs top taut around his biceps. “If I hide here it’s harder for the interns to find me.”

“You’re such a great chief resident,” John said, fighting to keep his attention on the page. He picked up his pen and twiddled it across his knuckles and back, the exercise in manual dexterity long since turned from learning tool to habit to nervous tic. “I can’t believe any of them are brave enough to come near you. It’s, what, their third week? Long enough for them to figure out that you’re not practicing tough love, you’re just an unbelievable bastard.”

“They’ve come full circle on that already,” McKay said wearily, eyelids drooping. “They decided I was trying to be funny. Precocious group this year. And moronic.”

“Ah, come on,” John prodded, smiling involuntarily.

McKay lifted his head enough to make eye contact. “One of them tried to suture a paper-cut this morning.”

John snorted in spite of himself, watching as McKay’s eyelids slowly drifted closed again, his dark lashes spreading wide and sooty against pale tired cheekbones. He kicked his legs up on the table in front of him and folded his arms across his chest, pinning the journal between his body and his forearms. “So, your living will?”

“Organs,” McKay said muzzily. “Donate them all.”

“Yeah,” said John amiably. “There’d be more chance of us using them if you stopped living off coffee and power bars, and left the hospital once in a while.”

“Can’t leave,” said McKay, drifting. “Interns’ll kill everyone.”

“They do okay,” said John, thinking of the last group of five interns who’d survived the scathing rite of passage that was working for McKay. Two had opted for family practice. Three were doing their residencies in emergency medicine in some of the top hospitals across the state.

John must have drifted a little himself because suddenly his pager was beeping in staccato counterpoint with McKay’s and they were both lurching to their feet, wiping their faces as they checked for drool. McKay got to the phone first, listened for ten seconds, and slammed the receiver down.

“Come on, multiple MVA on the interstate, they’re sending three critical cases our way,” he said, and skidded into the hallway.

John, who could never snap into full alertness the way McKay did, rubbed his eyes and followed clumsily. They knocked shoulders as they got into the elevator, staring up at the numbers illuminating the countdown to the ground floor.

“What made you decide to tell me about your living will?” said John, more to fill the anxious silence than anything.

“Ah,” said McKay, smoothing down his hair, digging in his pocket for a pen. Six. Five. “You’re listed as next of kin now. Just a paperwork thing. They say to tell your loved ones about your wishes.”

“Loved ones,” repeated John dumbly. Three. Two.

“Yeah, loved ones,” said McKay, and grabbed John by the back of the neck, hauled him in for a gummy-lipped, sleep-deprived kiss. The elevator pinged – ground floor – and McKay stepped back, barreled out of the elevator and began shouting, calling his interns to heel.

John blinked three times, licked his lips, and stepped into the fray.


End file.
